Observations focused on the problems of an underdeveloped country, Venezuela, with some serendipity about the world (orchids, techs, science, investments, politics) at large. A famous Venezuelan, Juan Pablo Perez Alfonzo, referred to oil as the devil's excrement. For countries, easy wealth appears indeed to be the sure path to failure. Venezuela might be a clear example of that.

Archive for September 7th, 2011

As I noted in the next to last post, there is now more information on the website of Fonden on the details of the projects funded. After spending a day looking at “tools” that would allow me to manipulate the data, I gave up. So, I began doing the task by brute force, I went to “Todos Los Proyectos” above and copied project by project into an Excel spreadsheet, hoping to find some of the “missing” US$ 29 billion or so. You can find the Excel spreadsheet here.

The quick conclusion?

All of the projects added up to September 6th. 2011 on the webpage of Fonden add up to only US$ 27.22 billion, far from the US$ 69 billion of the earlier report to the National Assembly.

US$ 38.158 billion, some US$ 30 billion short (Still!) of the US$ 69 billion the fund has received and the total provided by the Finance Ministry to the National Assembly.

Thus, all the work did not yield much, except that by doing it brute force, I read every single project in the website in detail and will have more to say about them later. For now, we still have some US$ 29 billion “Unaccounted for” based on the information provided to the National Assembly, as well as combining the projects in the Fonden website on Sept. 6th. 2011 plus those missing from it in the report to the Assembly.

Thus yesterday, the Vice-Minister for Foreign Relations said this was false, despite the press conference in Gambia by the guy in charge of electrification in that country. My friend @Naldoxx contacted me yesterday and showed me documents (part of which has since been published by la patilla!) of which you can see the portion of the funding above. In no uncertain terms, it says that Venezuela’s Bandes has lent that country the money for the project.

Thus, in terms of half truths, the Vice Minister is right, Bandes lent the money to the Gambian Government, it is not a gift, just a loan, but in the end, I suspect it is the same, somehow Venezuela does not collect in most of these loans, least of all from Gambia, a country that will likely have to roll over the loan over and over.

So, it is false Venezuela gave Gambia the money, it was Bandes, and it was a loan, not a gift, OK?